Three teenage girls are facing felony charges for vandalizing street signs in Magdalena.

Village Marshall Larry Cearley said during the board of trustees meeting on Monday, Oct. 26, that three teenage females had been charged in juvenile court.

“The state has asked for reimbursement, but I don’t think that’s going to happen,” he said.

After the meeting, Cearley said the girls were ages 15 and 16 and at least one of them has been in trouble before. All three face charges of felony theft and tampering with evidence.

A total of 36 signs were stolen and damaged beyond repair. Most of them were signs placed on top of poles identifying street names, Cearley said.

“Twenty-eight of them were village signs, there were a few state highway department signs and one was on private property,” he said.

Cearley said the damaged signs were discovered on Oct. 15.

“They hid them behind the Wells Fargo Bank and then moved them to a ranch east of town and put them under a tree,” he said.

Mayor James Wolfe said during Monday’s meeting that the street signs had been put up earlier this year.

“We just finished getting new signs up and now vandals have torn down every sign,” he said, adding that many of them had been bent until they broke. “I’ve had more people around town say, ‘What happened to our signs?’”

The village’s board of trustees approved an expenditure of $1,500 to have the signs replaced.